Designing Health Cities Using Data and Policy

Dr. Daniel Fuller
Canada Research Chair in Population Physical Activity
School of Human Kinetics and Recreation
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Joyce (Noel) O’Doherty Wellness Fund

Blue Sky

Physical Activity is Good for You

Woodcock et al. 2011

Underlying Assumption

Flickr: Michel Rathwell

Data

Data

Data

Fuller et al. 2017

What we know

  • Mixed land use and walkable areas promote physical activity
  • Sprawl reduces physical activity
  • Public Transit contributes to physical activity
  • High quality infrastructure are key

Smith et al. 2017; Creatore et al. 2016; Cain et al. 2018

What we want to know

  • How much do specific urban form changes cause changes in health?
  • What is the potential health overall impact of urban form changes?
  • What can researchers do to help cities (KMb)?

Themes

- Data and Methods

- Policy

- Ethics

- Open Science

Projects

- ITHIM

- BikeMaps

- Urban Form Measures

- Computer Vision

- Itinerum

- Ethics

ITHIM

  • Integrated Transport and Health Impact Modelling Tool
  • Allows one to estimate the health impact of transportation interventions
  • Considers multiple factors and both co-benefits and co-risks

ITHIM

  • Estimated impact of three scenarios in California
    • Rate per million population

Low Carbon Driving AT AT + LCD
Premature Deaths -3 -305 - 308
DALYS -31 -5169 -5197

Maizlish et al. 2013

BikeMaps

  • 30% of bike collision data are collected
  • Cyclists are 2x more likely to be a in collision that motor vehicle users
  • Need a central method of reporting

https://bikemaps.org/about/

BikeMaps


Jestico et al. 2016

Measures

The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium gathers and develops measures of environmental factors for every neighbourhood across Canada

Urban Density Score

  • 33 Census Metropolitain Areas
  • 4 dimensions
    • Density
    • Mixed land use
    • Centering
    • Street Accessibility
  • Bayesian Spatial Factor Analysis

Urban Density Score

Transit Accessibility Score

  • 41 Canadian Cities
  • Global Transit Feed Specification
    • St. John's
      • 926 stops | 116,151 stop times
    • TTC: Toronto
      • 10,634 stops | 4,347,536 stop times

Transit Accessibility Score

Machine Learning

Computer Vision

Google Image Recognition

Computer Vision

Detect cycling infrastructure and cleared sidewalks

Computer Vision

INTERACT

The INTErventions, Research, and Action in Cities Team (INTERACT) is a national research collaboration of scientists, urban planners, and engaged citizens uncovering how the design of our cities is shaping the health and wellbeing of Canadians from coast to coast.

INTERACT

Transportation Mode Detection

Policy

VOCM

Policy

  • What is generizable?
  • What is local?
  • How do local and generalizable interact?

Policy

Policy

Competition

Sidewalk Toronto

Competition

The Guardian

Ethical Reflections

  • Do participants understand what they are consenting to?
  • Do participants understand what can be done with the data?
  • How does this relate to social inequalities?

Fuller et al. 2017

Ethical Reflections

Social Inequalities

Stringhini et al. 2017

Social Inequalities

  • Addressing social inequalities is crucial for healthy cities
  • We must not let smart things shift our focus

Open Science

Open Science

For the sake of social well-being and security, individuals and private companies should not be allowed to possess any exclusive cutting-edge technology or core AI platforms.

Feng Xiang

Funding




Team

You Rock!
Faramarz Dorani Jonathan Low
Hui Luan Desiree van Heerden
Kassia Orychock Javad Rahimipour Anaraki
Bo Simango Majid Beheshti Mohtasham
Maria Yulmetova Melissa Tobin
Machel Rayner Richard Buote

Thank you

Daniel Fuller
dfuller@mun.ca
@walkabilly